Thursday, May 26, 2011

Bread pudding recipe with cherries and chocolate

There's only one thing to do with leftover bread, and that's to make bread pudding. This combination - dark chocolate, sweet cherries, and a slug of spirits - wins rave reviews every time. If fresh cherries aren't available yet in your area, dried cherries work too. Or just wait a few weeks. They're coming.

I like to use leftover challah for bread pudding because it's sweet and eggy. But I've made bread pudding with baguettes, sourdough, whole-grain bread - it all works. The heavier the bread, the more dense the pudding. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

You're going to have to picture the finished recipe in your head, by the way, because I've only got one photo of it, and it's lousy. Use your imagination. It looks like bread pudding.

The combination of rich custard, dark chocolate, sweet cherries and a slug of booze works every time.

Ingredients

6 cups leftover challah bread, cut into cubes

8 eggs

2 cups heavy cream

3 cups milk

1/4 cup whiskey, bourbon, Cognac or Armagnac

1/2 cup brown sugar

pinch of salt

2 cups fresh sweet cherries, pitted

2 cups dark chocolate chips

Instructions

Let the cubes of bread sit out on the counter for a few hours - you want them kind of stale. (Alternatively, toast them in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes to dry them out.)Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Spray a large baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. (When I say large, I mean the kind you'd make a big lasagna in. Not a turkey roaster.)In a large bowl, mix together the eggs, cream, milk, liquor, sugar, and salt. Add the bread cubes and mix so all the bread is wet. Stir in the cherries and chocolate chips. Let the mixture sit on the counter in the bowl for about an hour, stirring it up every 10 minutes or so to make sure the liquid is well distributed.Put the bread mixture in the prepared pan. Bake about an hour, until the center is set and the pudding is puffy. Serve hot, warm or cold, to great acclaim.

What a glorious combination of flavors! My sisters love bread pudding...I can't wait to make this for them. Thanks for sharing with me tonight. I hope you have a beautiful day tomorrow. The weekend is almost here! Hugs from Austin.